William Finn

William Alan Finn, born on February 28, 1952, in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American composer, lyricist, and book writer whose Broadway credits include Dangerous Games, Falsettos, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. He died on April 7, 2025. Raised in Natick, Massachusetts, in a Jewish household practicing conservative Judaism, Finn grew up alongside his siblings Michael and Nancy. He attended Temple Israel in Natick, where Harold Kushner served as his rabbi. It was during Hebrew school that Finn wrote his first play, a work he later described as having been composed in Hebrew despite his limited command of the language. At Natick High School, he participated in the drama department under teacher Gerald Dyer and competed with the school's speech team. His bar mitzvah gift was a guitar, which he taught himself to play.

Finn pursued music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, arriving as a guitar major before transitioning to piano. He described transferring his guitar knowledge directly to the keyboard while continuing to write original songs throughout his studies. His first produced musical, Sizzle, was staged at Williams College in the fall of 1971, with Finn writing the music and lyrics and his friend Charlie Rubin contributing the libretto. The production was notable as the first original musical mounted on the Williams campus since Stephen Sondheim had attended the college more than two decades earlier. Upon graduating, Finn received the Hutchinson Fellowship, a musical composition award.

Finn's professional career was rooted in a trilogy of short musicals developed Off-Broadway: In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, and Falsettoland. All three works follow the character Marvin, along with his ex-wife Trina, his boyfriend Whizzer, his psychiatrist Mendel, and his son Jason. The latter two installments of this Marvin Trilogy were combined into Falsettos, which opened on Broadway at the John Golden Theater on April 29, 1992, and ran for 486 performances. The production received seven nominations at the 46th Tony Awards and won two: the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, the latter shared with collaborator James Lapine. Finn also received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in 1991 in connection with this body of work. A revival of Falsettos opened on September 29, 2016, at the Walter Kerr Theater and earned five nominations at the 71st Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical.

Working again with Lapine, Finn developed A New Brain, a musical drawn loosely from his own experience recovering from brain surgery. The central character faces a potentially terminal arteriovenous malformation, and the piece explores the role of music in illness and recovery. Finn's longtime partner, Arthur Salvadore, is represented in the work by the character Roger Delli-Bovi, and Finn's mother also appears as a character. A New Brain starred Malcolm Gets, Kristin Chenoweth, and Chip Zien, and premiered at the Lincoln Center Theater in 1998. The musical won the 1999 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical, and its UK premiere took place at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Finn's next major Broadway success was The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, for which he wrote both music and lyrics. The show was first developed and produced at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, before transferring Off-Broadway and then to Broadway in 2005. It won two Tony Awards that year, one for Best Book of a Musical and one for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical, and subsequently toured the United States in 2006. At Barrington Stage Company, Finn later co-created The Musical Theatre Lab with Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, an annual summer program supporting emerging musical theatre artists and the development of new works.

Among Finn's other projects were several musical revues and song cycles. Elegies: A Song Cycle, produced in 2003, comprised songs written in memory of people Finn had lost and in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Make Me a Song, conceived and directed by Rob Ruggiero, premiered at Hartford's TheaterWorks in 2006, opened Off-Broadway in November 2007, and closed in December 2007 after 54 performances; a live recording was released by Sh-K-Boom Records on April 29, 2008. Finn also contributed songs to the song cycle Stars of David, which premiered in October 2012 at the Philadelphia Theatre Company and was based on Abigail Pogrebin's book Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. His songs appeared exclusively on singer Lisa Howard's album Songs of Innocence and Experience, released on April 12, 2011.

Finn also collaborated with Lapine on Little Miss Sunshine, which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in California from February 15 through March 27, 2011, with Lapine directing and writing the book. The production subsequently began Off-Broadway previews at Second Stage Theatre on October 15, 2013, opening on November 14, 2013. Among Finn's frequent collaborators over the course of his career were Lapine, director Graciela Daniele, and performers including Stephen Bogardus, Carolee Carmello, Alison Fraser, Norm Lewis, Michael Rupert, Christian Borle, and Chip Zien. Fraser, also a former student of Natick High School drama teacher Gerald Dyer, appeared in the original casts of both In Trousers and March of the Falsettos. Finn's work consistently drew on autobiographical material, encompassing themes of Jewish and gay identity, family, illness, and loss.